Guild Wars 2

Imbune.5497:

sorudo.9054:

….i play an mmo for the game, really don’t care about the loot at all……young players these days….

Do you think being condescending make you sound intelligent or enlightened? What exactly does ‘i (<- common ’I’) play an (<-MMO doesn’t start with a vowel) mmo for the game’ mean? That’s the most useless argument I’ve ever read-‘I watch Godzilla for the movie’ or ‘I read Lord of the Rings for the book’. This post would have actually possibly been valuable if you first dropped condescending tones at the door and second explain what ‘the game’ is. For instance:
“I play a mmorpg for the online community/story/lore-the mechanics/flair don’t interest me as much”…a fair point…but still utterly irrelevant to people who are interested in the things you aren’t interested in. Also…if you don’t care about mechanics/flair then any changes would mean nil to you…so why does it bother you again?

Just a correction the indefenite article to be used before MMO is correctly.. an.

The reason is.. you do Not pronounce it…mmoh… you pronounce it Em Em Oh.

Since the initial sound in Em Em Oh, is a vowel, the indefenite article is an,…not a. In English we care more for How it sounds not how it’s spelled.

after all… do we write.." that guy that blabbed wasn’t he an NSA employee? " or do we say " a NSA employee?"

“an FBI agent?” or " a FBI agent?"

Snark is not a good thing if you make errors when correcting others.

“Is anyone else getting slightly tired of GW2’s stance on. If they can actually gain loot, make sure you nerf it. So they cannot get loot.”

NCSoft > Anet

Conncept.7638:

They could try actually selling things in the gemstore at an honest price without gambling

They… do? The only thing on the gem store that involves gambling are the handful of items exclusive to bl chests (tickets/ticket scraps, mostly), everything else on there sells for a set price.

If ArenaNet seriously just wanted to stop its players from getting loot, then why can I still log in > kill one enemy > get loot.

Hmmm.

I imagine you’re upset not that you can’t get loot, rather that your precious hamster wheel system of farming for loot was destroyed or damaged. QQ

Azhure.1857:

If ArenaNet seriously just wanted to stop its players from getting loot, then why can I still log in > kill one enemy > get loot.

Hmmm.

I imagine you’re upset not that you can’t get loot, rather that your precious hamster wheel system of farming for loot was destroyed or damaged. QQ

Actually, if you kill a mob, there is a fair chance it wont drop anything at all, even a ruined item. I spent a good amount of time farming skelks in southsun in an attempt to get some tier 6 mats and I could kill several skelks and not see a drop of any sort.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

Conncept.7638:

They could try actually selling things in the gemstore at an honest price without gambling

They… do? The only thing on the gem store that involves gambling are the handful of items exclusive to bl chests (tickets/ticket scraps, mostly), everything else on there sells for a set price.

A set price yes, but, he said HONEST PRICE which I translate to as a FAIR PRICE not the ripp-off prices they currently charge.

The loot system in this game is terrible. I could be farming skelks or karkas and get better drops then the blues and greens from a legendary monster.

They could change it to:
- Remove junk items (Porous Bones, Tail Fin, etc)
- Increase money drop (by very little)
- Keep the current drop rate of crafting materials
- (See attached image for new loot table)
- Increase drop rate of basics

chronometria.3708:

Azhure.1857:

If ArenaNet seriously just wanted to stop its players from getting loot, then why can I still log in > kill one enemy > get loot.

Hmmm.

I imagine you’re upset not that you can’t get loot, rather that your precious hamster wheel system of farming for loot was destroyed or damaged. QQ

Actually, if you kill a mob, there is a fair chance it wont drop anything at all, even a ruined item. I spent a good amount of time farming skelks in southsun in an attempt to get some tier 6 mats and I could kill several skelks and not see a drop of any sort.

I don’t doubt what you said about killing a mob and getting nothing for it. However I did just log in again, went straight to Southsun, and found some Reef skelk.

After 7 killed I got 1 Large Fang, 3 Dark Stained Claws, and 1 Salvageable Hide. Yeah I know its not a get rich quick situation here – but it is loot. Eventually it adds up.

Edit: Sorry, it was just one fang from the skelk kills, not two.

I have been playing since Beta and enjoyed it but the game that Anet sold back then is no more,their priority concerning the game has changed,now it’s more about the gem store and insignificant LS,checklist.

There is nothing more disappointing in any game than investing time and killing some baddies and get nothing out of it. Yes maybe the gameplay and experience can be fun, but that hasn’t changed since launch. So any fun in that is long gone. What keeps things fun is the drops. When those get predictable they get less exciting and again less fun.

I remember playing diablo 1 back in the day and always being excited to see loot with different mixes of prefixes and suffixes. Sure most of it was junk, but it kept me playing. Oh and that occasional tink when a ring dropped and you had to spend an hour looking for that tiny piece of trash.

My point is that gameplay gets repetitive and predictable but it’s the random and unpredictable loot that keeps us going. Sure maybe most of it is trash, but when you get something super cool it recharges your batteries so to speak and keeps you going.

I’ve noticed in GW2 an overall lack of cool loot. Sure it exists as rare skins or T6 mats but it seems to occur much less often these days, making most of what we get junk, blues or greens. How I’d love to see an increase in the chance for a random cool piece of loot.

Sure we can buy things we need off of TP, but that needs gold and one method of acquiring gold was nerfed. That left us with one less viable option to make gold from an already small pool of legitimate ways of making gold. Sure making gold is fun, but what’s going to keep me going when killing mobs is the variety of loot and occasional special piece that makes you want to keep going.

My problem with loot is that with how the current game economy is, these blues and greens that drop often are nearly worthless in value literally. Okay so a rare drops, it’s still almost worthless in value 15s up to 50s on average in that range. An exotic drops, usually that might be 80s up to 20g but often no more than 2g on average from my experiences.

I have almost 200% MF and it seems I get an exotic maybe once a month, twice if I’m really lucky and exotics almost are low value now with the game’s economy and all of the extremely expensive items on the TP. If we go to cost of items needed to craft expensive items then the materials needed are expensive.

I make my gold because I know of some places and ways to get gold more reliably rather than kill this champ and this world boss and hope I get lucky. If i really need some gold I’d just do some gathering in select spots on several alts really quickly but that’s not why I bought GW2. I bought it to kill kitten and have fun doing it but also get some rewards for time spent.

I am ultimately on this game for fun but there needs to be some reward. We all need to make gold in order to fund whatever we want. I’m all for buying gems to buy gem store items but I’ll never buy gems to convert to gold because that removes a large part of the reason to play a MMO which is to get loot.

I remember on this older MMO, Vindictus. I’m not comparing, just using an example. There were certain item drops needed from daily raid bosses that were very rare drops and needed to craft certain gear while most items in the recipes were easily obtained there often were between 1 and up to 3 items that were rare and often too expensive to buy so when someone got that drop it felt good. It felt like actually gaining something.

The reason I mention that game is because on GW2 we can farm to attempt to get mats needed but then DR eventually will kick in and that’s a big middle finger imo from Anet to the players. If Anet doesn’t want anyone to farm excessively then perhaps they should improve the rewards.

My long standing opinion in a MMO has been that a happy player will spend more real life money on the MMO than an unhappy player. I have fun with GW2 and with people i run with and often in open world and even some dungeon pugs. Here’s something to think about though…. – How many people get annoyed by not being able to get good drops and just says screw the game and quits? -

If someone quits they certainly are not giving any money to Anet. Not everyone can spend lots of real life money on gems to convert them to gold. Not everyone can free up time to farm all the time while dealing with DR making the farming less productive. I know standard level 80 exotic gear is beyond easy to get but there’s more to get in this game that just that and if people are forced to endure things they don’t want to then they might find another game.

That goes back to my opinion of a happy player will spend more money on the game than an unhappy player. People are going to farm or find other ways to make gold. It’s like a kid fighting against a parent trying to do something they shouldn’t but in this case we’re paying players that bought this game and should be able to do what we want in the game.

Sometimes when I don’t want to do gathering runs or briefly farm something to get bad loot or watch world bosses give trash with little value, sometimes i just log out for the day. I have fun with this game because I can make gold when I need to but it’s not like it should be. So much to do on this game yet so few things actually give players reward enough to keep them interested. How many people decide not to deal with the loot nerfs, champ nerfs, everything nerfs?

Anet is hurting themselves in the long run imo. People paid for this game and many of us buy gems and support Anet. Anet should start doing things we want and make more people happy and maybe more people would buy more gems more willingly because then more people would be much happier with this game and far more satisfied. It just seems to simple that it’s mind boggling how Anet fails to act on this.

Asmodeus.5782:

There I was, silly rabbit, thinking that loot has absolutely no meaning and only the gameplay matters. Deary, deary me.

Normally, I would completely agree. Good example is WvW. But in this PvE, when you don’t have actual novel/enjoyable gameplay, when there is no permanent content (it’s been enough time for most people to go through everything aspect of the game), no new areas/dungeons etc., loot, in addition to community, becomes important for the shear cosmetic progression of people’s characters. And cosmetics are important driver in GW2, yet players have less and less means to go for expensive items with sources of income being nerfed and with more focus being on the cash shop and gems-gold conversion actually advertised (!) by Anet. Not everyone has the RL money to buy a skin. I’m sure more people would be inclined to spend the money on actual content like an expansion which offers said gameplay.

tl;dr – Ofc gameplay is more important, but with the lack of gameplay cosmetics become more important and they require loot/gold. People will play fun content without demanding loot. See: Great Jungle Wurm. Sadly this patch isn’t such content.

The topic confuses me a bit.

If you guys are talking about loot, you have to explain what you mean by this.

A)Gold, karma, or other currencies?
B)Crafting mats?
C)Exotic equipment, unique skins, or otherwise “rare items”?
D)Other odds and ends that don’t fit into the above?

Because each one of those is a different beast in itself. Just straight-up gold is a wealth producer, and can contribute to inflation of gold. Crafting mats and “rare items” acquire wealth by being sold on the TP, which due to taxes contributes to deflation of gold.

As for the gem market… that one is also a complicated little monster, and I think people are being overly paranoid over it. The more gold there is, the more people buy gems with gold, which makes gems more expensive. The more valuable gems get, the more likely people will buy gems with cash. Gold and gems match each other in value, to a certain degree, and because of this any farming will have only a minute and temporary impact on gemstone sales.

So the real question is, why does Anet reduce certain farming tactics? Well, I can think of a couple of reasons.

#1: They want more players to run dungeons for their gold and mats. You can call this a tinfoil hat, but I can’t find any evidence to disprove this, so it stays on the table.
#2: Anet is trying to adjust disproportionate inflation somehow. Gold and commodities don’t always grow together, so sometimes one will be curbed to prevent drastic overflows. For example, low tier mats are currently nearly worthless, and removing the low level champ trains might increase their value, thus providing new players with more liquid wealth.
#3: Anet is trying to change their early game image. I must imagine that, for new players, seeing the queensdale train was disheartening, as it is an example of the kind of endless grind that GW2 has been really good at avoiding. Anet probably weighed the losses of people who like the easy grind, and just assumed that they would go elsewhere.

There’s probably more reasons, but I’m too sick to try and write anymore. On the plus side, this cold has given me a much grittier and deeper voice, so be sure to reread this post while thinking of me as being extra manly.

Lord of the SWAG andd the fellowship of the BLING

Anyway I’m sure there other business models that the BLTC can provide, so that we and the company can benefit without hurting the gameplay. I still don’t know why they don’t come up with other ways for spendibg money in the shop. To date I am still willing to buy guaranteed items from the shop instead of gambling. Until then I will continue to spend less than 20bucks a month or so for bling.

Ashadow.6874:

I am not sure if they realize. But there are only three huge reasons anyone plays a video game:

Loot. (Fun for people who loves shinies, and gives them something to do.)
PvE/PvP. (Fun for the people who just want to kill everything. And be challenged.)
Story. (Fun for the people who love immersion and suspension of reality.)

And here I was playing games because I enjoy the gameplay.

Even if what you say is true for you, what kind of a masochist would you have to be to play this game for loot and loot alone? The only time a dev has ever revealed the details of a drop table that I’m aware of, it was to let us know the chances of Final Rest dropping from its then undisclosed/bugged boss were so low that a single player would on average get theirs first one from farming it 3 times a day some time in the late 2020s. It was in not-so-subtle terms: “DON’T TRY TO FARM IT. YOU WILL NOT SUCCEED.” Trading your bits of luck for someone else’s coin and then swapping that for a third person’s bits of good fortune is the fundamental acquisition model of this entire game – and some people seem bound and determined to be the grease in those grindy, grindy gears by doing their dammedest to pump the economy full of mud-coin.

They don’t “nerf loot”, they enforce a fiercely Spartan/sparse model and go around wiping out aberrations. They don’t want you to stop farming… they want you to never have done it in the first place, because farming/grinding sucks the joy out of play.

Imbune.5497:

sorudo.9054:

….i play an mmo for the game, really don’t care about the loot at all……young players these days….

Do you think being condescending make you sound intelligent or enlightened? What exactly does ‘i (<- common ’I’) play an (<-MMO doesn’t start with a vowel) mmo for the game’ mean? That’s the most useless argument I’ve ever read-‘I watch Godzilla for the movie’ or ‘I read Lord of the Rings for the book’. This post would have actually possibly been valuable if you first dropped condescending tones at the door and second explain what ‘the game’ is. For instance:
“I play a mmorpg for the online community/story/lore-the mechanics/flair don’t interest me as much”…a fair point…but still utterly irrelevant to people who are interested in the things you aren’t interested in. Also…if you don’t care about mechanics/flair then any changes would mean nil to you…so why does it bother you again?

aw, you you feel offended because i say something like…i dunno…my opinion.
also, you’re pretty much proving my point, i don’t care about loot because as long as the game doesn’t screw me i am happy, you’re obviously playing the game for the loot…..

I don’t see that much loot nerf really, people going in circles in the starting zone was annoying as it was. Killed a champion out of order?! ohmygod you are a bad person.

That said, they nerfed one area, typically the area where you just have to sneeze at an enemy to tip it over. There is still 30 other zones in which there are champions, which NOONE ever does. It will be a while before that is done however.

Plus it’s only the starting zones, having to deal with the endgame farm zombies right away is just not fun.

As for the pavilion, it is indeed quite silly that there is no XP and no loot from any of the mobs at all. There is no reason to be in there other than attempting the boss blitz.

So this “nerf” is hardly that impressive. It’s just that people are lazy to find a new farm.

Why mobs drop weapons and armor at all, what if the drop was part of the materials to craft your own weapon, it would be still part of the mmo, and would make more sense of the crafting stuff that was built only to buy time in game.

There is not mandatory drop (loot )for mmo’s….

cainejw.7142:

kratan.4619:

A R W E N.6895:

Azrael.4960:

Real money -> Gems -> Gold conversion has been part of the game from day 1, didn’t you know?

But did you know that the focus on gemstore is actually increasing so much?

But did you know that their jobs depend on people spending in the gem store and not just providing free content?

But did you know that you can give great content and people will buy from the gem store out of loyalty to the product instead of putting content exclusively in the gem store and saying “Buy it or no new content?”

City of Heroes did it. It was quite profitable, too. Everything in the store could be accessed in the game, but players were so loyal to Paragon that they would buy from the store because it supported their beloved game. I know because I spent hundreds of dollars in the store on stuff I didn’t really need.

That is the game which was closed by NCSoft because the payment model did not work, right?

Nike.2631:

They don’t “nerf loot”, they enforce a fiercely Spartan/sparse model and go around wiping out aberrations. They don’t want you to stop farming… they want you to never have done it in the first place, because farming/grinding sucks the joy out of play.

For some players.
Others enjoy getting gold and drops. I remember when I first did last year’s Queen’s Pavilion. It was a farm fest and I did it for weeks on end.
I remember when Orr had the ember farm going – the same – i spent tons of time doing it.
Also CoF P1 before dungeons were changed – I spent a huge amount of time doing that.

Looking back at my GW2 experience those two instances are the first that pop to mind when I remember my fond and good memories related to the game.
Not the Zaithan fight, not Teq 2.0, Not Liadri. But those – the good farms that were very rewarding were what I believe to be my most fond moments spend in the game.

I’m not the only player who sees things like this.
For some players just playing is enough – but the gameplay alone as I’ve said before in another thread is not enough to warrant the time investment needed to play an MMO. Players play MMOs for loot and character improvement.

Nike.2631:

They don’t “nerf loot”, they enforce a fiercely Spartan/sparse model and go around wiping out aberrations. They don’t want you to stop farming… they want you to never have done it in the first place, because farming/grinding sucks the joy out of play.

That could make sense, until you look at an ascended light armor recipe.
At TP prices.
At laurels and other timegatings.
And at what you need to actually have fun.

If they didn t want you to farm (wich is FALSE, they clearly states they are against GRINDING, but farming is OK!) they would have given you method to get whatever you want playing the way you want…

Instead they had it but changed things so you NEED grinding.

kratan.4619:

A R W E N.6895:

Azrael.4960:

Real money -> Gems -> Gold conversion has been part of the game from day 1, didn’t you know?

But did you know that the focus on gemstore is actually increasing so much?

But did you know that their jobs depend on people spending in the gem store and not just providing free content?

But did you know that it is not our business to be concerned their jobs?

We are customers and their job is keep us happy. If they are not doing their jobs well, and they make their customers unhappy, it only means that they will loose money, and customers too. Customers are not putting their money for the product what they feel unsatisfied. Eventually they will come in that point that they will loose their jobs, if they are not shape up with their innovation and development. In every company it is like that. If their customers are unhappy, they are voting with their legs and leave.

So if customers want more loot, they should put there more loot and shinies. If players don’t like lottery type gem store, they should abandon that lottery system. If they want earn more money for gems, they should abandon gold->gem option. It hurts those customers who don’t have money. But they could develope that kind of system, that if player really wants some item from gem store, but dont mind if they get it bit later than others, and they dont mind to work for it. They can gain that same item from game, just for playing game, and doing some things and eventually gain that same item. There are always those players who wants items right away and are willing to pay for it, and for those who dont have money, can gain it little later than others just for playing the game.

So to company’s future is very important to keep their customers happy.

Sorry about my bad English.

One in ten trash mobs must drop a piece of level 80 exotic or higher quality gear with a skin the player has never had before and must be worth at least X amount of gold. Surely that will stabilise the economy… -.-

GW2 is not a loot grind, you people are making it a loot grind.

One common problem with loot drop in any MMO is as you level up, more of the loot table becomes “junk” to the player, only worth selling to others, salvage or sacrifice to the mystic slot machine. After your first 80 everything is junk as you quickly twink your next characters into great armor (and weapons) you simply buy off the TP until you hit 80 and then switch to exotics and reskin at your pleasure.

With your first, anything that drops that’s better than you have is a great drop. You don’t have the coin to buy something good right away so you depend on drops and karma armor from Heart vendors. And if you do accumulate enough coin to buy off the TP, you probably don’t have enough to get really great stuff, both armor and weapons. Anything that drops can be new and shinny as the game is still new to you.

Once you are experienced, then it seems that everything that drops is junk short of an exotic or a precursor. Pretty sure most of us have been playing at least a year and have two or more characters at 80. The game has lost it’s new MMO smell. And after doing the same boss fight/dungeon path/fractal/jump puzzle for the 100th time we’ve all have become somewhat jaded. It’s routine now. So overly familiar gameplay plus perceived junk loot equals “why am I’m playing this” which is understandable. But since devs in any MMO can’t create new content faster than the majority of players can consume and grow bored of it, it’s really up to each player to find a reason to log in and play.

The loot is so bad, it feels punishing.

My best ‘loot’ days in this game were the ‘head start’ days prior to release (when keys actually dropped from mobs).

Now, I can slay 10-15 mobs in a row without a single drop only to get a gray on the next.

I also think you shouldn’t even see a blue or green drop from mega boss kills, and you shouldn’t get a lower level item back from the mystic forge when you toss in 4 level 80 items.

This is the most unrewarding game I’ve ever played. I really hope it changes soon, and that we actually get a response that the dev team is listening and working on a solution.

Conncept.7638:

Those who would like to purchase things from the gemstore for real money get jipped by RNG and corner-cutting because the items are designed and priced knowing that ANet isn’t guaranteed any money off their sale because of gold to gem conversion.

Actually, Anet is guaranteed real cash for any gemshop purchase. It is so because gem conversion does not create gems – it only buys gems that were created by using real money by people that went for gem→gold conversion.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

Conncept.7638:

They could try actually selling things in the gemstore at an honest price without gambling

They… do? The only thing on the gem store that involves gambling are the handful of items exclusive to bl chests (tickets/ticket scraps, mostly), everything else on there sells for a set price.

BL weapon skins, dye packs, mini packs

Harper.4173:

Nike.2631:

They don’t “nerf loot”, they enforce a fiercely Spartan/sparse model and go around wiping out aberrations. They don’t want you to stop farming… they want you to never have done it in the first place, because farming/grinding sucks the joy out of play.

For some players.
Others enjoy getting gold and drops. I remember when I first did last year’s Queen’s Pavilion. It was a farm fest and I did it for weeks on end.
I remember when Orr had the ember farm going – the same – i spent tons of time doing it.
Also CoF P1 before dungeons were changed – I spent a huge amount of time doing that.

Looking back at my GW2 experience those two instances are the first that pop to mind when I remember my fond and good memories related to the game.
Not the Zaithan fight, not Teq 2.0, Not Liadri. But those – the good farms that were very rewarding were what I believe to be my most fond moments spend in the game.

I’m not the only player who sees things like this.
For some players just playing is enough – but the gameplay alone as I’ve said before in another thread is not enough to warrant the time investment needed to play an MMO. Players play MMOs for loot and character improvement.

I have to agree with Harper, atleast to a certain degree. The last 10% of the game (Ascended, Legendaries, Gem Shop purchases) are up to 1000% more expensive than the other 90% of the game. You don’t have to grind, or even to farm for those 90%. But if you want the 10%, you have to find the most effective way to get gold in order to obtain what you seek. That’s the point when the game turns grindy. And while I disagree with Harper regarding the fights versus early Zhaitan (The fight got nerfed veeery hard), Teq 2.0 or Liadri, those fights were great, I have to agree that farming CoF P1 all day, having 20G – 30G at the end felt more rewarding than beating Liadri one time, getting a title and a minipet.

Sinope.5630:

So if customers want more loot, they should put there more loot and shinies. If players don’t like lottery type gem store, they should abandon that lottery system. If they want earn more money for gems, they should abandon gold->gem option. It hurts those customers who don’t have money. But they could develope that kind of system, that if player really wants some item from gem store, but dont mind if they get it bit later than others, and they dont mind to work for it. They can gain that same item from game, just for playing game, and doing some things and eventually gain that same item. There are always those players who wants items right away and are willing to pay for it, and for those who dont have money, can gain it little later than others just for playing the game.

The problem is that different customers want different things, and most customers want multiple things, some of which can be contradictory in nature.

In this thread, in addition to people wanting more loot, we have complaints that precursor items and other super hard to get items are very expensive and that crafting things such as ascended equipment requires a lot of materials. The problem is that increasing the loot ends up increasing the cost of the super hard to get items on the trading post.

From the discussion, people don’t consider loot to be meaningful until it is valuable, but things that are easier to obtain are by nature less valuable. If every encounter dropped a Rare, an Exotic or even a Precursor, those items would quickly become much less valuable, and people would still complain that loot was worthless. ANet added luck MF boost Luck items to blue and green drops to allow those drops to give the player something permanent besides trash.

There will always be players that play more and spend more time optimizing the time/reward balance in the game by working out the most profitable means rather than exploring for the sake of exploration. They are having fun in their own way, and there is nothing wrong with doing that from a player perspective, and ANet can’t and shouldn’t stop that. But those players end up causing side effects which end up bouncing through the game causing other players to have less fun. A player that works harder at getting rewards will always be able to use that leverage to get rewards before players less interested in working solely for those rewards.

The argument in a nutshell: increasing loot further puts rewards in the hands of players that work the hardest for loot, and further puts them away from the vast majority of players that aren’t loot centric.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Pretty sure they might actually be trying to force stabilization on the exchange. They don’t want to stop people from converting, that would be stupid. But by making it harder to get gold they encourage people to put Gems back into the pool to get gold, lowering prices.

I don’t play for loot. Playing for loot in this game is absurd. Just like playing for loot in almost any sandbox is pretty absurd. Acceptable loot is easily accessible and even plentiful. I also don’t play this game to “win” all the money, because that seems to be the actual definition of loot here. We’re not talking about gear drops, or quality of gear, but the amount of gold whatever drops can be converted into. It’s sort of kind of neat to be “rich” in a video game, but ultimately to what end? What are you doing with all the gold?

I haven’t been restricted from killing anything, just how tough a portion of those things are, and to my knowledge the story hasn’t changed.

So the run down is, I don’t see the problem. It’s a lot of QQ for nothing important.

Actually most sandbox games just allow the economy to happen and only step in when a known exploit occurs unlike this title which is exactly like what the OP described, they step in whenever there is a known source of PVE open world loot that might actually give people a chance to earn something for a change. Seriously, it’s that bad. Until they learn from examples from history even recent history like D3 this trend will continue until even megaservers won’t be able to save the game from looking empty.

Chameleon Dude.1564:

One in ten trash mobs must drop a piece of level 80 exotic or higher quality gear with a skin the player has never had before and must be worth at least X amount of gold. Surely that will stabilise the economy… -.-

GW2 is not a loot grind, you people are making it a loot grind.

This is so true…..

Dusty Moon.4382:

Chameleon Dude.1564:

One in ten trash mobs must drop a piece of level 80 exotic or higher quality gear with a skin the player has never had before and must be worth at least X amount of gold. Surely that will stabilise the economy… -.-

GW2 is not a loot grind, you people are making it a loot grind.

This is so true…..

Hardly LOL HA! Wow that was the funniest thing I’ve read all day. So it’s the players fault that they have double RNG on bags and DR huh? Or it’s the players fault that instead of allowing loot drops to be in the Open World they’ve now focused it in Dungeons and WvW? Or the players’ fault that this game is so focused on the TP rather than the fun factor of rewards? Seriously you’ll have to explain to the rest of us how simply buying a game and experiencing it somehow justifies what they did.

Anet is repeating history. They really are, they are eliminating loot from the PVE open world just like what’s been done in every mmo out there since the beginning of mmodum but the difference is this game was originally supposed to be all about the open world, that’s why the majority bought this game so that we could play without ever stepping into a dungeon again, guess what that didn’t happen. They are also making this a TP focused game title, where it’s not the amount of work you put into a character it’s how much gold you can buy that makes the difference.

It’s all just a repeat of history, I suggest people read up a bit more on mmo development history and listen to the players who’ve played these games for years ever since the first mmo’s because we’ve seen this happen before we know what it does to game titles and that’s why we are so concerned about it.

sorudo.9054:

Imbune.5497:

sorudo.9054:

….i play an mmo for the game, really don’t care about the loot at all……young players these days….

Do you think being condescending make you sound intelligent or enlightened? What exactly does ‘i (<- common ’I’) play an (<-MMO doesn’t start with a vowel) mmo for the game’ mean? That’s the most useless argument I’ve ever read-‘I watch Godzilla for the movie’ or ‘I read Lord of the Rings for the book’. This post would have actually possibly been valuable if you first dropped condescending tones at the door and second explain what ‘the game’ is. For instance:
“I play a mmorpg for the online community/story/lore-the mechanics/flair don’t interest me as much”…a fair point…but still utterly irrelevant to people who are interested in the things you aren’t interested in. Also…if you don’t care about mechanics/flair then any changes would mean nil to you…so why does it bother you again?

aw, you you feel offended because i say something like…i dunno…my opinion.
also, you’re pretty much proving my point, i don’t care about loot because as long as the game doesn’t screw me i am happy, you’re obviously playing the game for the loot…..

Nobody would be playing this game if it would be not fun, but apart of this, you dont seem to understand the point of this thread. Loot is an important (the most) important factor in any RPG game. It enhances your experience, it distinguishes you from the crowd and it is THE reason why things like precursors or legendaries in general are priced as high as they are. You can go ahead and install any RPG game there is and come back to this thread reporting how low of a factor the loot in that particular game was. Perhaps you need more? Loot was a thorn in the eye in Diablo 3 to such an extent, that it made Blizzard re-design the whole acquire, purchase, TP system…simply because of dissatisfaction of the crowd. Its fine to be that “white knight” of the thread, I know….but please… think about it in global measure. The only way to obtain something special is the gem store. The policy of this game is basically, earn gold, buy loot. The drops in the world are sad, the rewards for practically everything, be it www or a meta achievement are so much far from being adequate the effort. THIS is the point of this thread, but nooo.. lets have the “i liek thiz game for funnzies loot is lol i dont care ehrmagesh” attitude.

Azhure.1857:

chronometria.3708:

Azhure.1857:

If ArenaNet seriously just wanted to stop its players from getting loot, then why can I still log in > kill one enemy > get loot.

Hmmm.

I imagine you’re upset not that you can’t get loot, rather that your precious hamster wheel system of farming for loot was destroyed or damaged. QQ

Actually, if you kill a mob, there is a fair chance it wont drop anything at all, even a ruined item. I spent a good amount of time farming skelks in southsun in an attempt to get some tier 6 mats and I could kill several skelks and not see a drop of any sort.

I don’t doubt what you said about killing a mob and getting nothing for it. However I did just log in again, went straight to Southsun, and found some Reef skelk.

After 7 killed I got 1 Large Fang, 3 Dark Stained Claws, and 1 Salvageable Hide. Yeah I know its not a get rich quick situation here – but it is loot. Eventually it adds up.

Edit: Sorry, it was just one fang from the skelk kills, not two.

It’s because of DR, and I absolutely hate it.

In WoW, if I needed to farm something, and I found that you could get 1 from everything 3 or so kills, it just took 300 kills to get 100. In GW2, you may get 3 from the first 10, but the second 10 will give 1, and the next 90 will give maybe only 1.

DR is horrible.

Last year I farmed Wayfarer Foothills events to get Dragon Coffers. It was a LOT of fun and I got tons of Dragon Coffers. Sold a bunch the first few days and then kept a couple stacks for a year. Recently sold them for a tidy profit.

Thought this year’s events would be the same. I went to Wayfarer Foothills, played several events and after killing dozens and dozens of baddies, I got a crapload of “trophies” worth 2c, some tiny icy bags, and a few T1 materials. Not one single reward related to the current LS events.

THAT’S NOT FUN.

So I am so glad I was smart and decided NOT to buy 3200 gems for the infinite gathering tools when they were being sold at the Gem Store not too long ago. Why the hell would i want to spend any more of my hard-earned cash on a game that is continually losing all the aspects of the game that were any fun?

LordByron.8369:

Nike.2631:

They don’t “nerf loot”, they enforce a fiercely Spartan/sparse model and go around wiping out aberrations. They don’t want you to stop farming… they want you to never have done it in the first place, because farming/grinding sucks the joy out of play.

That could make sense, until you look at an ascended light armor recipe.
At TP prices.
At laurels and other timegatings.
And at what you need to actually have fun.

If they didn t want you to farm (wich is FALSE, they clearly states they are against GRINDING, but farming is OK!) they would have given you method to get whatever you want playing the way you want…

Instead they had it but changed things so you NEED grinding.

Correction: You don’t “need” to grind. We choose to grind but make no mistake, it is not a requirement. Just playing the game over time will net you the farming mats, gold, etc that are needed for the things we want. Those that grind do so because they want their PRECIOUS as soon as possible. There is no form of patience with so many people. Believe it or not there were rewards put in play to reward people over the long term… but we as a whole got it in our heads that we should have it NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW!!!

Who needs to farm loot when 100 gems can buy you 7.5g ingame! Its on sale now! Hurry while supplies last!

As you may have noticed by reading most of these posts Anet, assuming that you read them at all, A lot of the playerbase is most unhappy with loot nerfs. And unhappy players tend to go and play other games where they are happy. Something to keep in mind.

Huck.1405:

As you may have noticed by reading most of these posts Anet, assuming that you read them at all, A lot of the playerbase is most unhappy with loot nerfs. And unhappy players tend to go and play other games where they are happy. Something to keep in mind.

Hardly. All you’re seeing in this thread is a vocal micro-minority that is discontent. A handful of players are hardly “a lot” of players. It’s also pitiful that the same handful of players like slinging around poor attempts at insults like “fanboy” or “white knight” when anyone poses legitimate counters to their complaints.

It amazes me how the people who think every aspect of this game should be super bullet-storm hard mode, only their particular style of play should be allowed, and you should only be rewarded (and grateful for) meager scraps for an hour’s worth of play, that they honestly and truly believe they are the majority of the player base.

Spoiler alert: you are NOT.

I’ve never been one to bad mouth the gem store and gem conversion, because honestly that’s how they pay their employees. It does feel, unfortunately, at this point, that GW2 really is heading down a dangerous path where buying gold from them is the only reasonable method to obtain gold.

Now, I’m not saying there aren’t other ways to make gold in this game, because there are and I do them. I run dungeons regularly, I sell mats that I’m not using, when I finish my current set of Ascended armor, I’ll return to selling Ascended mats for profit. That’s all well and good. Heck I even play the TP every now and then, money has never really been a problem for me.

The problem, that I see, is that outside of playing TP and selling Ascended mats, there is no real viable way to make money besides dungeon running, which requires 5 people. I was never a fan of the champ train, and honestly I’m happy it is gone, but they really need to put in ways for people to make a decent amount of gold while playing SOLO.

EoTM zerg train is an OK option, but it literally is the same concept as queensdale train, so likely that will be revamped at some point soon, making it far less rewarding.

Some days you want to be able to do something on your own and not have it be a completely unrewarding experience (in terms of gold— as gold is the only way to progress in this game)

WvW can also be a pretty worthwhile investment (sometimes), but having WvW/EoTM be your only option as a solo player to make decent money (solo w/ zerg of course) just isn’t fair to PvE players. I play all game types, but I know plenty that are PvE only players and they continue to get kitten on.

I’ve been a longtime defender of GW2 and their ideas/changes (heck my post history would confirm this), but lately some of their choices have really made me question whether or not I can see myself playing this game long into the future.

TL:DR – They need viable options to generate income while playing SOLO PvE outside of buying gems from the gemstore to convert to gold, playing TP, or selling Ascended mats.

cmud.5689:

Loot is an important (the most) important factor in any RPG game.

Loot does absolutely nothing for gameplay. Gameplay is absolutely the only thing that will ever matter in any video game. No amount of loot will make me do something that isn’t fun and no lack of loot will stop me from doing anything that is fun.

Coldtart.4785:

cmud.5689:

Loot is an important (the most) important factor in any RPG game.

Loot does absolutely nothing for gameplay. Gameplay is absolutely the only thing that will ever matter in any video game. No amount of loot will make me do something that isn’t fun and no lack of loot will stop me from doing anything that is fun.

1.) Getting shinies is fun
2.) Continuous improvement of your character ..be it stats or flair is fun
I believe I have summed up a lot examples that this is the way it is. Also, I never said anything about doing something that is not fun in order to obtain loot. ..please dont make up stuff. Anyway, would love to see a pic of your character, armor, weapon skins, quality of the gear, etc. If you arent dressed up in some random yellows cleric armor wielding a green weapon you submit to the fact that loot is important to you as well.

cmud.5689:

Coldtart.4785:

cmud.5689:

Loot is an important (the most) important factor in any RPG game.

Loot does absolutely nothing for gameplay. Gameplay is absolutely the only thing that will ever matter in any video game. No amount of loot will make me do something that isn’t fun and no lack of loot will stop me from doing anything that is fun.

1.) Getting shinies is fun
2.) Continuous improvement of your character ..be it stats or flair is fun
I believe I have summed up a lot examples that this is the way it is. Also, I never said anything about doing something that is not fun in order to obtain loot. ..please dont make up stuff. Anyway, would love to see a pic of your character, armor, weapon skins, quality of the gear, etc. If you arent dressed up in some random yellows cleric armor wielding a green weapon you submit to the fact that loot is important to you as well.

Try not to use fallacies as arguments. The desire, and importance, to improve your character is not the same as loot being important. Also, you can obtain a full set of Ascended gear without a single piece of loot contributing towards it. Additionally, what you find fun, someone else does not. I like running Fractals every day, you might find them boring. You might find running mindless zerg content (former weeniedale train) fun, while I find such stuff mind-numbingly dull.

Aidan Savage.2078:

cmud.5689:

Coldtart.4785:

cmud.5689:

Loot is an important (the most) important factor in any RPG game.

Loot does absolutely nothing for gameplay. Gameplay is absolutely the only thing that will ever matter in any video game. No amount of loot will make me do something that isn’t fun and no lack of loot will stop me from doing anything that is fun.

1.) Getting shinies is fun
2.) Continuous improvement of your character ..be it stats or flair is fun
I believe I have summed up a lot examples that this is the way it is. Also, I never said anything about doing something that is not fun in order to obtain loot. ..please dont make up stuff. Anyway, would love to see a pic of your character, armor, weapon skins, quality of the gear, etc. If you arent dressed up in some random yellows cleric armor wielding a green weapon you submit to the fact that loot is important to you as well.

…Try not to use fallacies as arguments. The desire, and importance, to improve your character is not the same as loot being important. …..

So, what is it?

…and I remember how – about half a year ago – the ragetrain was going down full speed on the dungeon sellers for being cancer to the economy, whilst the farm train was considered a negligible factor in the pricing of goods by many.

I said it then and I still stand to it now: Champtrains were the real issue there and I consider it an excellent and long overdue move to finally make the adjustments they did.

Priceless crying game on the forums these days.

cmud.5689:

Aidan Savage.2078:

cmud.5689:

Coldtart.4785:

cmud.5689:

Loot is an important (the most) important factor in any RPG game.

Loot does absolutely nothing for gameplay. Gameplay is absolutely the only thing that will ever matter in any video game. No amount of loot will make me do something that isn’t fun and no lack of loot will stop me from doing anything that is fun.

1.) Getting shinies is fun
2.) Continuous improvement of your character ..be it stats or flair is fun
I believe I have summed up a lot examples that this is the way it is. Also, I never said anything about doing something that is not fun in order to obtain loot. ..please dont make up stuff. Anyway, would love to see a pic of your character, armor, weapon skins, quality of the gear, etc. If you arent dressed up in some random yellows cleric armor wielding a green weapon you submit to the fact that loot is important to you as well.

…Try not to use fallacies as arguments. The desire, and importance, to improve your character is not the same as loot being important. …..

So, what is it?

• Skill points
• Trait unlocks
• Trait combinations
• Skill level of actually playing the character

Need I go on?

Draknar.5748:

TL:DR – They need viable options to generate income while playing SOLO PvE outside of buying gems from the gemstore to convert to gold, playing TP, or selling Ascended mats.

Seconded, strongly.

If people are not “meant” to farm, then goals like even a basic “I want to level a crafting skill in tandem with my character” need to require less grinding of both money and materials. As a new player, it was flat-out impossible to keep even a single item-producing crafting skill (armorsmithing) within ten levels of my character level because the droprates for cloth and fine material were so low.

Aidan Savage.2078:

The desire, and importance, to improve your character is not the same as loot being important.

Also agreed. Gear does not actually improve my character at all — take off the shinies and all that “progress” is gone. What I get excited about is intrinsic stats, abilities, and traits/talents. I was hoping GW2 would go down this road more than WoW and its clones do, but the skill system is quite unexciting, the backloaded traits are even moreso, and the introduction of ascended items made me worry about what other “vertical” elements they’ll introduce despite promising they won’t do that.

Aidan Savage.2078:

cmud.5689:

Aidan Savage.2078:

cmud.5689:

Coldtart.4785:

cmud.5689:

Loot is an important (the most) important factor in any RPG game.

Loot does absolutely nothing for gameplay. Gameplay is absolutely the only thing that will ever matter in any video game. No amount of loot will make me do something that isn’t fun and no lack of loot will stop me from doing anything that is fun.

1.) Getting shinies is fun
2.) Continuous improvement of your character ..be it stats or flair is fun
I believe I have summed up a lot examples that this is the way it is. Also, I never said anything about doing something that is not fun in order to obtain loot. ..please dont make up stuff. Anyway, would love to see a pic of your character, armor, weapon skins, quality of the gear, etc. If you arent dressed up in some random yellows cleric armor wielding a green weapon you submit to the fact that loot is important to you as well.

…Try not to use fallacies as arguments. The desire, and importance, to improve your character is not the same as loot being important. …..

So, what is it?

• Skill points
• Trait unlocks
• Trait combinations
• Skill level of actually playing the character

Need I go on?

Yes, you need to go on because the first 3 things you listed are considered given and the absolute basis for any character that wants to consider himself decent and are extremely easy to get.

And let’s not start on the skill level required to pve in this game.

Loot is an undeniably huge part of every mmo, and what gives some form of meaning to the end game for the hardcore players.

You’re assuming your own conclusion, though. If intrinsic things are thought shallow and easy to get and external things like loot are harped to the high heavens and considered the one and only ultimate “goal”, then that’s how you design your game. But it does not HAVE to be that way. Loot does not HAVE to be the end-all, be-all of every game. And in the minds of at least some of us, it SHOULDN’T be.

Chadramar.8156:

You’re assuming your own conclusion, though. If intrinsic things are thought shallow and easy to get and external things like loot are harped to the high heavens and considered the one and only ultimate “goal”, then that’s how you design your game. But it does not HAVE to be that way. Loot does not HAVE to be the end-all, be-all of every game. And in the minds of at least some of us, it SHOULDN’T be.

Of course it does not have to be that way for you.

You are a free man, you can do anything you want.

But please don’t go against us who care.

If you don’t want to bother yourself with loot and item progression, don’t bother, no one is gonna judge you.

But here we are talking about an extremely large part of the community that actually cares. The (semi) hardcore part of the community.

I don’t understand why i need to explain why item progression is one of the fundamental aspects of a MMORPG game.
This is, seriously, a fact.

Each time someone wants to criticize Anet’s policy on loot nerfing we get a thousand casual players trying to enforce us their way of thinking stating how loot is of no importance and we shouldn’t care about it.

Well, things are not that way.